


Straw House

by ChromaticHabit



Category: Shingeki no Kyojin | Attack on Titan
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-06-28
Updated: 2014-06-28
Packaged: 2018-02-06 13:48:01
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,473
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1860288
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ChromaticHabit/pseuds/ChromaticHabit
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It had taken humanity some getting used to, the realization that homes were no longer bastions of safety and security.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Straw House

As a recruit Jean had been taught that seeking refuge amidst an attack was a deadly mistake. Civilians fled to their cellars and attics, and their proximity to one another in such small spaces made them easy for nearby titans to sniff out. Soldiers who went inside were likely to be harassed by people desperate, confused and scared senseless, demanding to be carried away and saved. 

Ultimately, it was like hiding within paper maché. Even the smaller titans, more likely to scent a person out at ground level in the first place, could break down doors and collapse support beams.

A good soldier stayed on the rooftops and streets, where their 3DM gear was best utilized and they could remain within sight of valuable aid and earshot of a superior’s orders.

It had taken humanity some getting used to, the realization that homes were no longer bastions of safety and security. Even amongst the cadets there were those whose faces filled with unhappy shock and dismay when their classroom instructors warned them that houses, shops and other such smaller buildings were essentially deathtraps. It did not make intuitive sense. Surely any kind of concealment was better than to wait out in the open, lined up along the rooftops like a living buffet?

Jean had been one of them. 

“What kind of idiot would ignore cover, even shitty cover?” Jean snorted and flipped over his notes, pissed at his own nearly incomprehensible handwriting as he was at the material it covered.

Across from him, Eren bristled and his mouth made motions as if he was about to argue, but he said nothing. Instead he stood up from the table and quietly left, Mikasa following close. As always. 

“The fuck was that?” Jean asked, a little disturbed and feeling strangely denied.

Armin, who had stayed behind and was looking at Jean closely, answered. “It’s not any of my business to share too much, Jean, but do you remember our lesson?”

Jean sneered and gestured to his notes, splayed out over his dinner in preparation for their weekly exam. Armin did not have to worry, but Jean would be damned if he shot his chance at the MP over failing a fucking test.

“Not that,” Armin whispered, moving to sit across from him and leaning in, “Our classmates. A lot of people were bothered about being warned to avoid houses, and they all asked a lot of questions. What did they, those other cadets, I mean, have in common?”

A comeback came to mind, but Armin was worth not being shitty towards. Despite being one of Eren’s friends, he did not appear to have his head buried in Jaeger’s ass all the time and for a scrawny little guy he spoke with better conviction than you would expect. He and Armin were alike in some ways. Smart but cowardly. Damned with a moral code despite it. At least Jean was tall. 

The truth was about as respectful as Jean got. “No idea.”

“They were all born in the inner walls.” Armin spoke carefully, and he took a second to glance back at the door Eren and Mikasa had exited. “Jean, all the ones who stayed quiet and took their notes were those who saw the titans when they breached wall Maria.”

Armin was good at reading a situation, and he continued when Jean remained silent. 

“Eren’s own mother was crushed beneath their home when he and Mikasa found her. Those outside had the chance to _run_ , Jean. Running is the only reason all the silent ones lived.”

 

What feels like a lifetime later, and for all Jean expects of his lifespan in the Survey Corps, it is, he remembers what Armin had said to him that evening. 

He directs his horse to the cottage anyway.

It is the only building for miles and Jean doesn’t have miles to fuck around with. The roof is thatched and the windows are nothing but tiny square holes cut into the stone and sealed with greased paper. A poor farming family’s house. Jean knows its empty. He and his squad are fifty miles into their expedition of wall Maria. Anyone who lived here has long since either evacuated or been devoured.

Still, he remembers his scouting training and circles the house. The flatlands and rolling grasses are clear of titans all the way back into the tree line which Jean estimates to be at least 150 acres away. No 3 meter classes hiding behind the cottage or the rotting stables. A dry well.

The windows are too small for an escape route, so he hitches his horse up close to the door. It was different in the survey corps; homes were likely to be empty and there were few to no places to use the 3DM gear amongst the open countryside. There were fewer soldiers in the SC to stink them up, to boot.

His horse, a six year-old thoroughbred named Anka, was breathing heavily as he dismounted, her bay coat white with foam where she was not slick-black with ordinary sweat. Her sides expanded and emptied with a slowness that worried him, as if the lungs no longer had the strength to move the mass of horseflesh around them. Without her he was dead, and she needed at least a few minutes to cool.

Ten titans had befell his small squad, one of three de facto squads led by him, Armin and Mikasa after earlier disaster had initially divided and scrambled the ranks. If he was reading his map right the farm was only three miles away from the point he had been instructed to relocate to in the event that their formation broke.

The six men who had been with him had been slaughtered. Jean had used up his own signaling flares when the main force had initially been breached, and had little other option than to run his horse hard and relentless with no hope for aid. He had no idea how Mikasa and Armin’s groups had fared. 

Anka knickers softly at him and he takes the time to check the straps on the saddle and make sure the knot in her reins would come loose if pulled hard enough. The Survey Corps horses were unlikely to run without their riders, but if he died he did not like the thought of her being trapped. Besides, a looser knot would make for a quicker escape of his own. There was only a small spare gas canister and two back up blades bundled up behind the seat. He takes all three.

The windows were numerous enough to let him keep a decent eye on the surrounding landscape so long as the layout inside is simple. He opens the door and breathes a sigh of relief when he sees the open level; a trapdoor by the stove leading down into a root cellar or crawlspace. 

First things first. The door is better off left open. Jean is not sure if his horse would make any sort of noise if a titan appeared, but she would certainly be the first to feel a big one’s footsteps. He switches out his blades, finding that one of his backups has a fault in the joiner. There is ultimately no one to blame but himself for not checking his shit properly, and he refills his gear’s gas tank, leaving the two dulled blades and the reject on the thick layer of dust that carpets the folksy-as-hell kitchen table. The window paper could be torn out to clear the view. Maybe he could even find a way to light the greasepaper for a torch. The cabinets are not likely to have any unspoiled food inside, but if there is a stoppered jug or two of water or wine he and Anka could use either. 

The creaking hinges of the cabinet Jean opens mask the trapdoor’s own.

“Thank God!” A voice exclaims behind Jean, and he is dumb enough for a split second to give a hopeful look at the open door. 

It is empty, of course. 

The owner of the voice is instead lifting himself unsteadily from the space beneath the trapdoor. There must have been a ladder underneath it instead of stairs. Jean does not recognize the man, only his scouting legion clothing, which looks clean despite the dirt that coats the abandoned home. 

“Are you alright?” Jean asks, rushing over to offer a hand. It seems like the kind of thing someone prepared for this would say. “Which squad do you belong to?”

“14th West,” he answers, sounding as winded as Jean’s mount. “No injuries on me, but my squad is dead. Thought I’d hold up here and wait for a signal order. Got my horse hidden in the stables.” He peered over Jean’s shoulder and the open door, at Anka resting just outside it. “Some of the titan’s out here recognize that horses accompany humans, you know. The ones that have killed, at least. It’s either instinct or they smell on em’, but either way you’d best get him put up.”

“Anka’s noisy when she sees a titan,” Jean lies. “She’s a better scout than I am.” Even if the man was not full of shit, he did not want her out of sight.

The soldier did not look too convinced, his eyes darted back and forth between Jean and the door. “Are you alone?” He asks.

“My squad’s dead as well. Originally 7th West. We are close to a regrouping point, though.” Jean points to the half empty tank and blades on the table. “I have full gas for my gear, a little spare in the canister, and one working blade on me. Is your equipment usable? We’ve got just under three miles.”

“I could use the gas but my blades are shot. Lost the backups riding up here.” The man was a larger soldier, probably in his late thirties. He had a strong jaw and thick blonde hair, brushed back and slicked with shine. He could look like a leader, if he wanted to. But his voice was shaking and his eyes sunken and restless as he talked. “You know how it is when shit goes tits up and you’re escaping. You can’t stop for anything, you can’t fucking stop, you know?”

There are things Jean would have stopped for, but he doesn’t say that.

“Yeah.” Jean says, trying not to meet his eyes. “I about pushed Anka out there to her limit myself.” He tosses the man his gas canister before he realizes his mistake.

The soldier isn’t wearing any gear.

“Don’t tell me you broke something!” Jean did not mean to let his voice reflect how alarmed he was. Shit blades would only keep him from being offensive, but without gas the man had no hope of making any kind of escape once they hit the trees. 

“It’s fine, my gear’s just fine,” the man assuages, his palms up as though he had just been reprimanded by a commanding officer. “It’s in the cellar. Unstrapped the sheaths and tank before I climbed back up here. It’s too big to get up without being real careful, and I didn’t want to miss my chance in case you were rescue.”

“Well get it back up here. I want to be out of here in ten minutes, tops.” Jean was pissed now. What kind of adult soldier fucks around like this? Putting away his horse and hunkering down in the cellar like he was going to move the fuck in? If they both live through this Jean plans on reporting him. 

“What is your name, by the way?” Jean asks, not wanting his anger to show and figuring his inquiry could double as a weak apology. “Mine’s Jean Kirstein.”

“Isa Albrecht.” The man saluted when he said it. What a fucking idiot. 

“Sorry for being terse, Isa.” Not sorry. Why was Jean acting like the senior soldier here? “But I lost my comrades as well and while there is still a plan of action to go on I intend on seeing it through. You think you can get your gear brought up, put on and your tank refilled while I get your horse? He’s still saddled, right?” A single blade between two soldiers might not be much, but in a pinch it could take out an eye or slice off a massive, gripping finger.

“I’m sorry too, Jean.” The man responds, smiling nervously. “I don’t have a horse.”

Something hits Jean hard across the back of the head and he drops. 

“You were supposed to put your horse away first,” Isa says. “Grier is stronger than me and this would have been easier. But I stalled you here long enough, so it’s okay.”

Hands quickly went to grip tightly at Jean’s arms and he feels heavy knees hit the back of one thigh. His vision is blurred. Someone was on top of him, Isa was moving, he can make out little else.

Isa is still speaking. “I really am sorry about this, Jean. We don’t want to hurt you badly.”

He attempts to flip over and right himself, but his gear is held in place and he hears and feels rather than sees bodies and limbs moving around him in a rush to hit and kick what they could. It is a kind of violence he is not accustomed to, and when a second blow hits his ear it knocks him cleanly into darkness.

 

Jean comes around quickly, the ache in his bruises like the world’s most fucking awful wake up call, one side of his face ominously numb. At least he has only blacked out for a minute or two, because all that appears to have happened is that his gear is no longer a familiar weight on his hips, and he hears the clunking sound of it being thrown to the floor near his feet. He is chest down on the table and his supplies have been cleared off it. Dust clings to his cheek.

Anka is restless outside.

“The _fuck_ are you doing, you sniveling sonuvabitch!” Jean yells. But he knows perfectly well. The two of them, Isa and Grier, they have no horses and maybe no gear. They meant to have Grier ambush him in the stables, where his horse would be easier to keep corralled if spooked. Take his gear and his horse. When Jean failed to follow the plan Isa just kept him occupied and made sure his eyes stayed off the windows and door while Grier snuck back towards the cottage.

They would leave him here with nothing, and he would be lucky if a titan took him before starvation did.

Jean realizes he is being held down by one of the men, his wrists crushed tight against his lower back. Whoever it is, probably Grier, is strong enough to make his struggles and surges useless. 

“I don’t want him talking.” Isa was talking to Grier, ignoring him. “I don’t want to hear that.”

A rougher voice answered. “There’s gonna be noise either way. In case something happens I don’t want to explain why there are strips missing out of my uniform, and if we use his same problem. The stuff inside the drawers is rotten.”

Jean doesn’t understand. What good would a gag do if they planned to ditch him anyway? It is the kind of thing they do to interrogate or torture criminals in the innermost wall.

Jean kicks out awkwardly and screams when it earns him a stronger and better aimed kick to the back of his left knee, and three stomps, serious and painful as a gunshot each, to the right ankle and calf.

This man could break his bones, Jean realizes. He wouldn’t even be able to run or try and make a signal if they decided to leave him alive, which was a dwindling hope.

“You need to fucking knock that off.” Grier warns, giving Jean a shake that rattles his whole body. “We do this, and it’s gonna hurt, but you be a man about it, right?”

Jean hears what sounds like a belt buckle being undone. 

“There are titans in the woods up ahead.” Isa says blankly. “None of us are getting out of here alive.”

Grier moves behind him, rearranging his arms in front of him and then bringing the weight of his upper body down on Jean’s back. The pressure pins his upper body neatly and with little room for breathing to the table, and his grip remains unbreakable. 

Jean can do little but wheeze for breath now, and he can smell Grier so close. He smells like another man, with foul, unwashed teeth and oh god Jean never thought the smell of another body, something so common in the cramped bunks and quarters of his post, could be so terrifying.

His legs ache but he could move them. 

He does not, and knowing that he submits out of fear of more violence feels likes it is breaking him. How easily he was cowed by the strength and pain of these men. Some soldier he turned out to be.

But hadn’t he always known that? That he was a coward? It had once made him proud, because it only meant that he had some sense. Like Armin did. This doesn’t feel like self-preservation, or good sense, and it doesn’t feel like a choice. It just feels like fear. Fear so bad he is shaking with it.

Jean remembers what Armin had told him back in the mess hall. The privilege of running. 

The straps at his waist are undone carefully and his clothing pulled down to the top of his boots. Isa mumbles a few more awkward and halfhearted apologies but there is a new sound underneath it. The man is fondling himself, trying to get hard.

He wants to fuck him.

Jean closes his eyes and clenches his teeth as hard as he can, but a terrified bark of choked laughter breaks though anyway, “You can’t.” he informs the table as he tries to turn and press his face into it, hearing his voice grow weaker. “You really, really can’t.”

“Shut up.” Grier says gruffly. “You’ll bite your tongue.” 

No, Jean thinks, it is because Isa does not want to hear him. Does not want to listen to the teenager he is raping cry and beg. God.

Isa spreads his asscheeks apart and spits on him. Jean is sobbing now and it is difficult with Grier’s weight on him. It is little more than shallow heaving.

The first thing in him is not a penis. It is a finger, pushing forward slowly and stopping at the first knuckle. There is pain enough from even that to make Jean want to stop thinking, to stop calculating just how bad this is going to be. The finger does not probe further, but pulls down and back up, repeating and holding the stretch. 

“See kid?” Grier says soft, near his ear. And it is not malevolent, his tone. “It’s gonna hurt but we ain’t gonna mess you up bad.” Jean pulls his head in a futile attempt to get the man’s voice and the feel of it away from his ear. He cannot stand all the little smells and sounds and textures of the man right now, the realness and nearness of him. “Just let it happen and we’ll be done, alright?”

There is more spitting, and more pulling and tugging and stretching before Isa decides to fuck him. There was no point to any of it. The pain is great enough that everything Jean does in response to it is involuntary. His breaths break out in awkward grunts and his entire body shakes and trembles. Isa is loud, and he whines more than he moans.

He cannot run, he will not run. He is not crushed but he cannot run. Jean hears himself and he recognizes the sound, the awkward and ugly crying of a man who is dying amidst the chaos of Trost, who is surrounded by death and does not have the power to stifle his sobs.

Isa does not ejaculate inside him, and it barely registers. None of what is happening feels like sex. It feels like violence. Like one long, drawn out breaking of bone. 

It is when Grier’s weight is replaced by Isa’s and he hears more words of explanation and apology mumbled into his ear that Jean understands.

_You knew this kind of thing happens in the field, why did you come out here?_

That Grier is going to fuck him too.

_It’ll be okay, we can make it good, kid, I’m sorry, this happens._

That Isa was meant to open him up.

_You made me feel really good and you have to know, have to understand all of us are going to die real soon. Our gear is broken and even with a horse, there is just no way. We’ll all die here._

That Grier didn’t want to fuck an ass another man had cum in.

_It would have been better if you were a girl, it wouldn’t hurt so much and I’m sorry._

And when Grier does it he must be much, much bigger because Jean finally screams at the horror of feeling something small but muscular in him rip, and blacks out.

 

They both fuck him for three more days, and the pain and motion of it become dull, the nothingness of men waiting to die in-between all the more so. There was a small bottle of wine and a barrel of murky water in the cellar and one of them had managed to hold onto a few rations. Crumbling hardtack for the weary soldiers. It keeps him alive.

He finally catches a clear look at Grier’s face and the soldier is plain and unattractive. A short beard and square, squashed features. The ugliness reminds Jean that he had no choice in this in the same way that Isa’s endless, peeving rationalizations do. 

They leave him on the table throughout the ordeal, guiding him to piss in the far corner once a day. Tie him down at night using fashioned bits of what must have once been their own gear and hide themselves in the root cellar. The summer nights are hot and an honest part of Jean wishes they would let him sleep down there, too. 

They brought Anka inside the house and shut the door on the first night, too afraid of risking another trip to the stable. Perhaps they plan on eating her if they need to, or are just genuinely afraid she would attract titans. Jean does not really know or care. 

His horse watches him being raped, contenting herself to the sparse, rough weeds that have reclaimed the cracks between the neglected wood floors. It is surreal and pleasantly numbing. 

The second evening Isa shares with Jean his own dismal experience as a new recruit. Tells him all the details, unasked for, of when three other men, one younger than Jean was, had made him perform oral sex and massage them with his hands. That Jean could do that for them instead if he wanted to, if he hurt too much. Isa said he was sorry. It was why they try and stress you stay out of the houses. No one talks about it but of course these things happen. They must because he keeps telling Jean that they do.

 

On the third night he manages to loosen and slip free of his binds. The leather of their gear was not meant to be twisted and held tense for so long without giving some of its elasticity. Good, genuine leather cost too much money for common titan fodder.

They take his spare equipment and blades into the cellar at night, so those are a wash. Jean walks over and takes Anka by the reins, presses his face, most of it still swollen and tender from the beating, close to her neck and breathes in the scent of dirt and animal before he leads her to walk over and step onto the trapdoor. The sound of her heavy hooves on the wood wakes the two soldiers sleeping within, but whatever noises they are making are muffled. Very muffled. She is heavy for a thoroughbred, and obedient.

He takes a moment to clean himself up. He does not have water and it mostly means he brushes the dirt and wrinkles out of his clothes the best he can, tucks his shirt in and replaces his belt. Cards fingers through his hair and peels strands of it off his scalp. It feels good to touch himself and groom, even so meagerly.

The table is old but made from thick and heavy boards, held up by a carved tree trunk a bit less than a foot in diameter. He manages to flip it with enough effort, and Anka is too familiar with much larger things to spook at the sound. After Jean gets it pushed over the trapdoor he considers the stove as well, but decides against it. It would take too much of his energy, and let the two get out, he thinks. Let them crawl and climb and see if they are still strong enough and lucky enough to catch the next soldier. Maybe a pretty young Mikasa with her beautiful, deadly perfection or maybe sly, doe-eyed little Armin with a monstrous dumbass titan shifter at his heel. God help them, maybe Corporal Levi. Let them go mad and die alone, maybe.

Anka’s cinch needs to be tightened but his weight will make little difference to her, and she finds energy as only a horse can at the thought of moving again, the eternal hope that she is being led back to her food and water.

Once outside he carefully pulls himself into the saddle, lifts his face into the dark and the wind and does not even have to think about crying. The tears fall as they like.

The air is still unnaturally hot and the pain in Jean's body is desperate to not be forgotten with even the slightest shifting of Anka’s weight. He has no gear, no water or food, no way to signal, even. But the titans would move slower at night. He could see fires better at night. There were as many lies as there were stars in the sky, and he could choose which ones to tell.

These things happen in the military, Jean thinks, feeling terror still at imagining what might yet come. They happened to him.

Jean’s horse is surprisingly fast as he trots her across the fields long since gone to seed towards the far woods, guided by what little starlight can be given. They pass the well, and break into a run.


End file.
